I can imagine a world without Windows, and it’s a lot happier and more functional. Sgt Pepper’s never BSODs on me and doesn’t insist on showing me advertisements.
Sgt Pepper’s is a wonderful album which demonstrated, among other things, that a real rock band doesn’t have to tour, and that real rock albums can be purely studio creations which will never exist live. Thinking otherwise is rather perverse in its wake, which is how you know the influence it had and continues to have.
Post-1982 XTC is a great example of this.
How exactly does dosing together make you a band? You could have come up with other arguments that make sense, at least. The rooftop concert certainly indicates they still could be a band. My argument is that they weren’t playing that way during this time, so they really weren’t one. If that’s the closest thing you can come to making a counter-argument in the context of Sgt. Pepper era recordings, I’ll consider that a closed subject.
They weren’t playing together during this time? Dude, you’ve been incoherent in this thread so far but now you’re just wrong.
They had just retired from touring, and this was the first thing they did after they took a break. They didn’t pass some rubicon during the fall of 1966 that made them go from “a band” to “not a band.” Do you understand that only 3 months passed from touring to Pepper?
This was what they wanted to do as the first pop band to go down this road, without any other obligations, and having the success and talent to do it. They earned the right, and it was a big unprecedented decision, a fantasy that any pro musician with a great imagination and audience would want to follow. That’s “not a band”?
They hadn’t been playing well on stage anyway. So I suppose you’d say they weren’t a band at all during the whole time they were producing original music? Good one.
Incoherence? You’re the one claiming that if you drop acid with someone, it means you’re somehow playing in a band with them. Please spare me your horrible, oh so potent barbs.
(Bolding mine)
This, is the crux. If you can’t show up and do it, you can’t show up and do it. When we agree that being able to do it live makes you a “band” and not a studio creation, we have something to talk about.
Studio creations are wonderful things, but it is a different sport from being a band that can play a song live. Heck, if there’s a logical end of the studio mastery of George Martin during this era, it’s the remixers and DJs of the current era. They’ve proven that you can take things that didn’t even have to be originally intended to be together and create an artistic whole out of them when you are in the studio. Two different takes in two different keys? Gimme two different bands and show me what you can do. The Beastles and 2ManyJs are pretty great*, but I wouldn’t consider them a band.
*Seriously, I would have a hard time picking between the several originals that I love, but Mother Nature’s Rump beats 'em all for my money.
Are you talking about The Beatles?
Meh. There is no need to define “band.” Bottom line is that The Beatles were different during the recording of Sgt Pepper’s. Yoko was on the scene, the Jesus incident had happened, the different views and use of drugs was happening - John was somewhat less involved and Paul was rallying the band and asserting more leadership. A lot was going on, and the recording of the album was approached differently from even Rubber Soul and Revolver, let alone their first album recorded live in a few hours.
Looks like a lot of people like to read clickbait articles and go professorial.
Yoko didn’t come around until a year later. 1968.
The Jesus incident? Meaning what exactly?
Someone was overindulging and someone else was rallying? Seems like life to me. Whole 'nother animal? Only if you need it to be.
You are refusing after all this to answer any point I have made, so you are being incoherent.
But from what you are saying and not saying here, you are agreeing that the beatles weren’t ever a “band” while they were making their original music. And further, that when they actually set about concentrating on this and only this, it was an even bigger step away from “bandness.” Funny, but that’s the thing 99.9% of us care about, so I think you may be lonely on that end of the seesaw.
It seems like you are griping that there is no film or video of them playing together in 1967 for you to see. And that absent this, you’ll go on like this forever, ignoring any contradictory information, and lost in your own little point.
John met Yoko in November of '66. Look it up and get professorial yourself. No need for clickbait.
The Jesus incident means John’s statement about the Beatles’ popularity that was misconstrued and which affected him as he dealt with the controversy.
Beyond that, I’m done.
So…with a name like Reddy Mercury I am guessing you’re a Queen fan? LOL
So am I. For my money Freddie had arguably the finest voice EVER in all of rock and roll. He was so good he could have sung opera, I believe. And Queen is in my Top 10 or so of all-time favorite bands. If anything they were UNDER-rated.
On to your OP question and Sgt. Peppuh…as my Boston friend pronounces it. LOL. Hmm…I have always thought it was just OK. I guess that, for its time, some of the production and mixing and audio components of it were cutting-edge, or ahead of their time. That said, I think it is also dated today, and the music does not stand all that well to the test of time. I think that SPLHCB album is not nearly as enjoyable as the rival LP that many audio-geeks compare it to: the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.”
I DO think the Beatles were one of the, oh…five or seven best bands of all-time. But I admit I was always more of a Stones and even a Kinks guy. I think both those bands are better than the Beatles, and so was Queen, Led Zep, Skynyrd, ELO, the Stones, Kinks, Eagles, Beach Boys, and of course, maybe the BEST ever: Da Who! LOL
I would pit Tommy up against SPLHCB anyday of the week. And the Who’s music I think has stood the test of time far better. Than anybody, really. Them, Zep and the Stones. I’m sorry to any Beatles fans reading this, but to a new listener today, 70% of their music is hopelessly dated. There was some genius in the Beatles catalog, but also a good bit of chaff. None of them were exceptional musicians, insofar as playing their instrument is concerned. No, at that they were competent. No more. Ringo was not as bad a drummer as some say, but he was light years behind the incomparable Keith Moon and Charlie Watts.
Thanks!
I’m not sure if SP is overrated per se, but I don’t particularly care for it myself excepting ADITL. It does what it does well, but even an overarching story album about a band that plays twee, sometimes-retro pop songs still contains a lot of twee pop songs. Many of them would have been better used as the lighter songs on other albums and would have sound balanced there since they could contrast with the other compositions.
Yoko wasn’t “around” during Pepper. They had met in 1966. They got together in Spring 1968. Thereafter she was “around.” Do you imagine she was this succubus who took him over as soon as they met? This is what I meant by clickbait, and shorthand received wisdom.
There were many “incidents” in the lives of these people, which “affected” them. For instance becoming the most successful musicians in history? Stopping the endless touring and concentrating on their songs? But for the life of me I can’t connect the Jesus furor to Sgt Pepper or see what it has to do with their musical integrity as a band.
Paul McCartney was an influential, world class, monster bass player, as well as playing every other instrument in the band.
Where do you get the factoid that a “new” listener would find 70% of it dated? Oh, that means you…and not the kids who get turned on to it and love it with each generation. Melodies and music don’t date. You can try to make superficial advances on the sound, but you can’t write the songs again. That’s the disadvantage of subsequent bands.
McCartney’s talent was in songwriting and vocals and arrangements. He had a good studio ear as well. And had a talent for knowing what the kids wanted to hear. But as a bass player he was hardly world class. That’s an absurd claim. Laughable even. Especially when you consider all the jazz and classically trained bass players out there who could play Beatles stuff when they were about twelve.
If you’d have cut you claim in half or more and said he was one of the best bass players in the pop rock genre, you might have an argument at least. But I can guarantee he wouldn’t win a poll for that honor taken among other musicians and music critics of the era. Not for pure bassist. John Paul Jones would mop the floor with him in a duel. As would Entwistle. As would Bill Wyman.
You’re an obvious Beatles fan. That’s cool. But let’s not get carried away.
If you can read music, or even tablature, I invite you to check out some McCartney’s bass lines sometime. Most of it’s pretty damn basic. Pardon the pun.
And I by no means wish to defend the state of Pop music today! Never have seen so many talentless singers and musicians. Especially the female singers. They all sound like whiny twelve year olds and have their vocals so thoroughly altered in the digital mix and the voice synthesizer that there is zero life in the music. It’s as sterile and soulless as a micro chip clean room.
I thought rap and hip hop were back but this shite is worse. Drum machine and female robot voices backed by a space synthesizer. WTF?
Yeah, no. McCartney is one of the most influential bassists of the rock era. Entwistle, James Jamerson, Larry Graham and McCartney.
That reminds me of a funny post I remember.
Hm. I never talk about jazz players and rock stuff in the same category. But Macca was a superior musician to those people. (Wyman?!) His composing informed his playing and vice versa. And he did it all first, leaving guys to follow him and people to think they were the first. (You really overshot with Wyman though.) McCartney was the greatest supporting player/singer in pop history, by most measures. But I got to say I don’t usually focus on the bass when i listen, and I’m sure these guys could play their groups songs in a way that advanced some technique past the Beatles benchmark. But if you played on the best songs and you wrote the best songs then you rule, regardless of notes per minute, or dollars per note, or any other measure. i can’t separate the material from the facility. That’s my ears.
No, not laughable at all. No, he’s not a Victor Wooten or Jaco Pastorius, or whatnot, but his melodic approach to the bass and serving the song makes him world class to me, and I doubt you’d get many accomplished bassists to disagree. He is one of the most influential bassists of the rock era.
You’ve yet to make a point in response to me, and have answered nothing. In fact, nothing you have said even begins to imply that you understand one thing about what’s being argued.
The rest of your post is more incoherent nonsense of you building strawmen out of things no one has bothered to say. They were obviously capable of playing as a band when they were creating original music. I’ve obviously mentioned the rooftop concert. They were exemplary as a band then, and were all still writing music. You won’t know if they were during SPLHCB because they didn’t play as a band. That was the point of the record, they wanted songs that were a studio creation only. If you really want to dispute that, or if you really don’t understand the difference between what a studio creation and what a live band does, I’ll leave you be. See ya.